The Duke in His Castle by Vera Nazarian

The Duke in His Castle by Vera Nazarian centers around the immortal and cursed Duke Rossian. He will live forever, unable to leave the grounds of his estate, unless he can tap into his own magic powers. Kept in suspension for years, Rossian exists in an overintellectualized state of static, petulant melancholy. He’s pretty much resigned to being a living, impotent ghost…until Izelle comes along.

Energetic, plain-spoken and not particularly attractive, Izelle contrasts sharply with the mopey and placid Rossian. Her jester-like nature irritates his languorous existence. Even further, though, she repulses him, for she brings with her a casket of bones. The mere thought of death, to say nothing of actual pieces of a corpse, nauseates and frightens Rossian, but Izelle claims that the casket of bones holds salvation for them both. The bones are from her mistress, a duchess who suffered the same house arrest as Rossian does; yet Izelle’s mistress successfully magicked her way out. According to Izelle, if Rossian can use his magic to restore the bones back into a living woman, he will learn how to break the curse that holds him to the spot.

Of course, despite his resistance, Rossian eventually exercises his powers of resurrection. As the dead woman comes back to life, so do Rossian’s desires and his own energy. Strange connections surface between Izelle, the resurrected woman, and Rossian, and the extent of everyone’s powers is illuminated.

This plot summary captures some of the allegorical and structuralist underpinnings of Nazarian’s story, but does no justice to the actual sensual experience of reading it. Nazarian applies the language like sweet, rich jelly upon well-baked bread or swathes of brocaded drapery across a plain, symmetrical stage. Here she describes the morning:

“Grey and silver is the light of intimacy. Such is the inviting sensation achieved at the rare moments when the world appears to have no color. There is something placid in the surface of a grey sea or the overhang of silver sky. When rain comes thick as a curtain, again, color is diffused and dissipated, and all that remains is the same as what’s on the inside of one’s eyelids. This particular dawn is quite the epitome; its intimate huelessness calls all unto itself, into its pallid grey places, to come and be soothed in the infancy of light…”

If you’ve ever awakened just around sunrise and looked out at a world that seemed to be resting for a moment, floating weightlessly, holding its breath, you know that her description is accurate. More than that, her prose transmits the particular reverie of those early moments, in which the greyness of the light seems soft and soothing. Throughout her novella, Nazarian employs the sheer opulence of her prose to bring her characters’ experiences and surroundings to life. The cumulative effect sinks you into Rossian’s dreamy perspective, in which everything is heavy with import and painful beauty. It’s the perfect marriage of form and function.

Gorgeous prose would be nothing without an equally gorgeous story to subserve, and here Nazarian delivers as well. Clearly, she’s doing a sort of life/death/life cycle in mythic tradition, and the stock natures of her characters—the lonely cruel man, the profane jester, the discreet butler, the dazzling resurrected child-woman—add to the fairy-tale aura of her story. At the same time, because the cast is so small, Nazarian has the space in which to describe, in luxuriant detail, the movements of both Rossian’s and Izelle’s minds and hearts. While not a stream of consciousness, her style moves deliberately, polishing up the details of vocal tone, body language, and momentary thoughts so that the reader can use them to knit together rich portrayals of the characters. Nazarian’s careful construction of her story people makes the primary simple event—a transformation—appropriately heavy with significance.

Speaking of the characters, Nazarian does a wonderful job making them accessible and sympathetic, despite their unusual predicaments. As I mentioned above, Rossian is a Romantic/Byronic hero: dashing, heartless, heartbreaking, and filled with the ennui of a delicate soul. Given initial descriptions of his aloof handsomeness and his dismissive, nasty behavior toward his servants and Izelle, I first assumed that an eternity of imprisonment had evacuated him of humanity. Then, later in the book, in one of my favorite passages, Izelle actually brings tears to his eyes by insinuating that he has had sex with the resurrected woman. Rossian’s startled and visceral reaction to Izelle’s taunt shows that a) he’s not a bloodless zombie and b) he’s not as inured to the world as he likes to think. The way that Nazarian writes him, Rossian starts off as a fascinating, but repulsive, caricature of himself and then slowly develops into an actual human being.

Sustaining a solemn foreboding tone is a challenge unless your name is Shelley or Poe…or Nazarian. From the very first lines, Nazarian takes her story seriously, and her gravity convinces the reader. This is not to say that she’s dour because there are many flairs of dark humor at play. However, despite their levity, Rossian and Izelle realize that they are dealing with matters of life and death—not just for the resurrected woman, but also for themselves. Toward the end, there are increasing hints that Rossian and Izelle play important roles in balancing not only each other, but also the very fabric of the entire universe. To Nazarian’s credit, she makes the characters believable, both as flawed human beings as well as individuals capable of such power. She uses the weight of her prose to make the reader feel the great responsibility of omnipotence.

The Duke in His Castle is not for everyone. You may be put off by the solemnity it emanates, its slow pacing, its attentiveness to the smallest details, its abundance of description, and its dense prose. But these traits are the story’s very strengths and make it a poignant fable of great psychological acuity, beauty, and profundity.

Publisher: Norilana Books (June 2008)
Hardcover price: $17.95
Trade paperback price: $7.95
Pages: 124
Hardcover ISBN: 1934648426
Trade paperback ISBN: 1934648434